According to U.S. Border Patrol data, nearly 2.4 million migrants were arrested at the southwestern border this year, the highest number ever recorded. Republicans have been increasing criticism of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies ahead of the coming midterm elections. Former President Donald Trump recently told a crowd in Robstown, Texas that immigrants are “invading our southern border.” Straight Arrow News contributor Ruben Navarrette contends Republican lawmakers like Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, love to complain about migrants’ drain on the state’s resources, but the truth is something entirely different.
There’s a word, a magic word that Americans are guaranteed to hear quite often whenever the immigration issue comes up. It’s a word intend to gin up sympathy for states that have fallen on hard times, supposedly, because they’re being invaded by foreigners supposedly, through no fault of their own. Allegedly. That word is the B word:
Burden.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, both Republicans, have bused migrants to Washington, D.C. and New York as part of a publicity stunt to score points with conservatives. It was a cruel maneuver and unfair one. The migrants in question had played by the rules. They turned themselves into federal authorities and they were waiting a decision on their asylum claims to defend their actions. The governor’s deployed the B word. Both complained about the enormous burden that their states are inflicted with due to illegal migration. After the first busts of what Abbott called unlawful migrants got to Washington, the governor of the Lone Star State tweeted, “Texas should not have to bear the burden of the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border.”
What burden? That’s a flat out lie. I lived in Texas for five years while I was writing for the Dallas Morning News. Take it from me. Illegal immigration is not a burden to Texans. It’s a boondoggle. In fact, it’s such a good deal that if it didn’t exist, Texas would have to go out and invent it just to keep their state’s economy afloat. See, the critics of illegal immigration, many of whom also oppose legal immigration, well, these critics like to talk about the cost of having millions of undocumented people roaming around the Lone Star State. They talk and talk about the pressure on schools, jails and the health care system. Fair enough. Fair enough. But funny thing, though…those same folks never talked about the benefits, the benefits of all that undocumented labor.
